Tamoxifen Recommended to Reduce Breast Cancer Risk

-- A. Agrawal, PhD

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

WEDNESDAY, May 27 (HealthDay News) -- Tamoxifen and raloxifene can reduce the risk of breast cancer in high-risk women, according to updated guidelines published online May 26 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. In a related study in the same issue, weekly treatment of metastatic breast cancer with an albumin-bound form of paclitaxel improves survival compared with docetaxel.

In the first study, Kala Visvanathan, M.D., from Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore, and colleagues reviewed 17 randomized clinical trials, published since the last guidelines were issued in 2002, on pharmacologic interventions to reduce the risk of breast cancer in high-risk women. They found that tamoxifen for five years reduced the risk of breast cancer in both premenopausal and postmenopausal women for at least 10 years, while raloxifene reduced the risk in postmenopausal women.

In the second study, William J. Gradishar, M.D., from Northwestern University in Chicago, and colleagues randomly assigned 302 patients with previously untreated metastatic breast cancer to nab-paclitaxel (an albumin-bound form of the drug) every three weeks or lower doses every week, or docetaxel every three weeks as part of a phase II study. They found that the weekly doses of nab-paclitaxel were associated with longer progression-free survival and a higher overall response rate compared with docetaxel.

"Together, these results suggest that weekly nab-paclitaxel may be an appropriate alternative to docetaxel in the first-line treatment of patients with metastatic breast cancer," Gradishar and colleagues conclude.

Several authors of the first study reported financial relationships with the pharmaceutical industry. The second study was supported by Abraxis BioScience. Authors of the study reported financial relationships with the company, as well as other companies.